Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High | Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, ... | Crucial Reading

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Crucial Conversati...

	Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, ... McGraw-Hill, 2002 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 133 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Life-changing book

This book should be required reading for almost everyone! It describes how to initiate and carry through difficult conversations which effect everyone's lives. It teaches the reader how to examine his own motives and desires before attempting to share his ideas with someone else. It shows how to clarify issues and then present them openly and honestly without offending the other person in the conversation. Too often we resort to silence or violence when dealing with crucial conversations and the authors point out the futility of either position. This book is now being used in many businesses and is required reading for employees. Whether dealing with business or personal issues, this book is a superb resource.

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Crucial Reading

If you never experience conflict with anyone, this book isn't for you. Otherwise, Crucial Conversations is a crucial book. I teach personal safety/self-defense skills. Most of my clients want to learn the physical stuff, which is also crucial. However, even more important aspects of safety training are when to defuse a tense situation, and how to de-escalate a conversation when emotional stakes are high. The authors of this book point out that about half of those incarcerated for violence are not stereotypical career criminals or gangsters but first offenders, average people, who got caught in the "silence or violence" dichotomy until they could no longer keep their emotional energy under control and lashed out.

The authors bring together some truly productive strands of thinking. Stephen Covey's influence is obvious (he wrote the forward), but I also see themes about storytelling to justify our actions reminiscent of Pema Chodron (a Buddhist nun in a Tibetan lineage). Parts I especially appreciate are the sections on knowing yourself and what you want out of particular relationships, keeping that focus, and cutting through the stories we tell ourselves (and often tell others) to justify our behavior.

The skills in this book would benefit everyone in recognizing and resolving issues with those they care about. Or who wish to develop leadership abilities. Or who wish to live in a safer world.

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Outstanding book!!!!

Crucial Conversations is an outstanding book. This book can change the way people handle conversations in their personal and professional lives. It gives the reader tools to be able to conduct a crucial conversation.
I am a nurse leader and have used this book both in dealing with my employees as well as my superiors, including physicians, and it works!!!
There is work the reader has to do on him or herself to get to the heart of the matter, but it is worth the work.
I have a friend who is a Chief Nursing Executive at a hospital in Illinois and has given this book to all of her managers. I went to a conference recently where the speaker not only spoke highly of the book but sold it at the conference.
Absolutely outstanding. A must read for everyone

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Fluffy, but very good

This is kind of a fluffy business book... I generally hate these books, but this one has a creamy nougat center of knowledge that I've never encountered before. At 200 pages, its a must read. Please ignore the Franklin Covey vibe: the authors really have something important to say.

This book solidifies what many have said before: those who genuinely understand how to communicate have all the power in this world. It's not about knowledge, skills, manipulation, or strength... Those who can get groups of people who distrust each other to come to genuine consensus will always have power. Why? Because its so incredibly difficult... and its so incredibly important.

This book helps you identify the behaviors that help -- and the behaviors that hurt -- when building consensus. Make no mistake about it: human beings are poorly designed to get along with each other. Our brains are wired for competition. At most we co-operate with genetically similar groups. Evolution has wired us to not want to work together with people too different from ourselves, lest we threaten our own survival.

That may have been useful 2000 years ago in highly competitive tribal cultures, but in the modern world such prejudice is usually counterproductive.

This book helps you identify which behaviors may be hindering you. When confronted, a human's instinct is fight or flight. In a conversation, the fight instinct comes out in argument, sarcasm, or belittling. Likewise, the flight instinct comes out as keeping quiet and doing nothing, or totally ignoring what the other person said... typical passive-aggressive behavior.

This book also presents exercises to help you keep a cool head, communicate clearly, and get things done... despite your evolutionary wiring.

If you read this book, and practice their exercises a lot, you will slowly gain a reputation as somebody who can really make things happen.

Highly recommended!

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Crucial Conversations

This book had good examples and figure I can learn something new no matter how many times I've heard the information. Since I've had a lot of PR training over the last 35 years, this was a refresher for other aspects of my life, like being an elected official. The words the author used for silence vs violence, story telling, etc. are just a different way of training from what I've had in the past. Wouldn't have been my first pick for a Book Club selection but somebody new to leadership development would find it valuable.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, page 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

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